Groundhog Day

D.J. #1: Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today.
D.J. #2: It's coooold out there every day. What is this, Miami Beach?
--The Opening Radio Dialogue to "Groundhog Day".

And so we soldier on through the home study.  Finger prints, letters of reference, home visits, financial documentation, etc. etc.  Today we had our home visit and although we cleaned all weekend, it was sit down at the dining room table with coffee and danish while we chatted about how different everything is now that we are parents.  This is the sixth or seventh time we've talked to our social worker Windsor (she did our last home study and post placement visits), so it was all very relaxed and very familiar.  She even condensed our study down from two visits to just one.  (Well one visit with two payments!)  We've done all this before, know the players, and the process hasn't changed, so it's almost kind of a redo.  It's nice to have something that's somewhat relaxed in the otherwise stressful time that is adoption prep. 

I also called our main agency, the IAC, and told them we're ready to get the ball rolling on "re-upping" with them.  We know the ropes there too, so we hope to be ready, approved, and on the books by summer's end.  Right now the only difficult part is, well, paying for it.  Luckily we don't have to pay the entire thing up front, but handing over thousands of dollars a month for the next six months or so isn't going to be exactly child's play.  I'm sure we'll figure it out...Powerball anyone?

To prove we're Dr. Spock approved parents, I submit the following certificate.  Being voted class clown at 2 years old might be cute, but I'm not sure what the future holds on that one...we may end up regretting it!

Everything Will Bring a Chain of Love..

Apparently I'm a week behind in blogging.  We've been back from California for a week now and I still have not unpacked my suitcase.  I should write a post about my procrastination problem, but that can wait for another day...

Our reunion with Sabrina's birth family was incredible.  There was a little trepidation on our part at first, because the original plan was to meet at a restaurant in Long Beach.  About a week before we left, "Lucy" (*not her real name) emailed us and said her mother wanted to make lunch for us at her place.  We were a little leary about this sudden change in plans, but we talked about it and decided that she had such trust in us, and made such a leap of faith by chosing us to parent her baby, that we needed to repay that trust back.  So on Saturday, we left our hotel in Old Town Pasadena and headed down to her home about a half an hour away.

We did not know what to expect as we had only met Lucy at the hospital when Sabrina was born.  I was not sure if there would be tears (I thought I would be emotional!), laughter, tension, or what, but I knew I was being silly.  We have a great relationship with Lucy and I mentioned to Gregg that I thought she would be more nervous then we were.  When we got there, she came out onto the front porch as we unloaded the car, and right away I knew this would be a good visit.  I saw a woman with a big smile on her face, just looking so happy.  When we got up to the door, she hugged us both but didn't take Sabrina from my arms.  We walked in and her mom was in her room still getting ready.  Lucy's two girls, 8 years old and 20 month old were sitting there waiting.  The older girl had a big smile on her face; the younger one looked a little unsure of us.  I could tell the older girl took good care of her sister.  When I put Sabrina down, she crawled right over to the kids.  The older girl gave her a big hug.  She turned to her sister and said "It's OK you can play with her, she's our sister".  I admit seeing the first meeting of the sisters made me a little misty.  It took Lucy a bit to pick her up, but when she did my gosh what a smile came on to her face!  Sabrina was in her happy mood (as usual!) and put everyone at ease.  After about a minute, we were all laughing like a big family.  I tried to get Sabrina to give out the gifts we brought for Lucy and the girls, but I guess we forgot to tell her that whole thing about being better to give then receive so I did it myself.

When we met Lucy's mother, we were at ease right away.  She is the kind of person that lights up a room.  We got big hugs, and she adored the baby.  She was able to make us feel so welcome in her home immediately.  And what a feast!  She's a fantastic cook, making a huge lunch of seafood jumbalaya and all the trimmings.  The best part of the entire day was at a point when the adults were sitting around the table talking, and the girls had moved into another room.  We could hear squeals of laughter from the three of them and that just made my heart sing.  We took tons of pictures.  We ended up staying there for over four hours, just laughing and talking.  We're so glad we ended up in her home, where we could all talk and the girls could get acquainted.  Lucy's mother told me her heart was at rest after meeting us and seeing how we interacted with and loved her granddaughter.  I told her our family had grown some more that day.  We received a warm and wonderful email from her the next day.  I think we are all looking forward to our next meeting.  Open adoption is truly a wonderful thing.

Lez Be Friends

200!  It's like "300" only without the sweaty gladiators with painted on abs...

Over the last few weeks I've been contacted by two lesbian couples who stumbled upon the blog while searching out information on agencies that could assist them in adopting a baby.  One couple is in Queen Creek Arizona about 15 or so miles from us, and the other is in Wisconsin.  We're actually becoming good friends with our AZ neighbors and had them over for brunch last weekend.  Unfortunately we were out of the traditional lesbian staples of Grape Nuts and pork rinds, but they seemed to enjoy Gregg's waffles and eggs anyway.

This week another blog friend, Michelle and Nick from Michelle's Path, are awaiting the birth of their soon to be adopted son, half brother to their cute little girl Kayla who they adopted in 2008.  The girls over at Baby Blueprint are finally pregnant, and some of our other blog friends are dealing with new contacts or TTC challenges.

I guess what I wanted to post today is that this blog started almost two years ago when we made the decision to begin our adoption not having any idea what to expect or anyone to turn to for advice.  We felt pretty alone, and it was scary at the beginning.

Now here we are on Those Two Daddies 200th post and we've come full circle.  We're about to finalize the adoption of a little girl who completely owns our hearts; feeling a love I never ever thought possible, love so strong just thinking about her brings a tear to my eye.  We're part of a circle of friends and families that share the bond of having children, trying to have them in a multitude of ways, or just thinking about it and deciding to make the leap.  Somehow we know what we're doing (or fake it well; half the stuff we did we made up as we went along!) and it's our turn to help others.  I'm so glad for everyone that has shared comments and posts with us and who actually read the drivel I've posted the other 199 times.  Some of you even came back after reading a post and didn't leave shaking your head over bad jokes.  Glad to know you all, and glad to be part of the circle.  You guys rock!

Marching to Finalization

Well everything is set.  Our finalization hearing in Los Angeles County Court will be on Friday March 5th.  That will finally be the end of this long legal process!  I called the court yesterday and found out they were going to set our date today.  The guy I talked to was so nice.  They only do Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  Coming from Arizona Friday works best because it gives us time to do the hearing, meet up with Sabrina's birth family, and visit friends we have not seen in a while.  I guess they are not supposed to allow you to pick your own date, because when I asked for the first available Friday he said "Call me back tomorrow morning before we open so we can talk off the record".  OK...so I did.  He let me pick the date and time I wanted.  I would have done earlier, but March 5th is the first available Friday morning.  The really amazing thing is, it will happen exactly one year from when we had our first contact with "Lucy" and learned about Sabrina's impending birth.  Freaky huh?  It even made Sabrina stand up and take notice...(which she's been able to do for about a week now, in 30-60 second intervals)

Oh well nothing lasts forever!

No, Please, Take Your Time

Here we are now in January of 2010.  Sabrina is closing in on 9 months old and her adoption is still not final.  It should have been done when she was somewhere between 6-7 months, so we've been trying to get this finished since the end of October.  First our lawyer (who actually, I love and think does a fantastic job) took a long time to get us the documents we needed to sign.  Since he's in Northern California and we're here in Righteous Town AZ, we couldn't just go get them.  We signed and sent them in and got them back about mid December.  (I'm sure they were slowed down by the War.  No not that one.  The War On Christmas.  You need to watch more Fox News...)  I had to get some copies, then sent them off to the adoption agency.  They were closed the last two weeks, so they only just sent their part off to the court yesterday.  Once they finally get there, we'll be able to get a date for the hearing.  I'm telling you, if you had to do all this to have a baby every time, the History Channel's "Life After People" would be happening in one generation.  I just hope we get it all finished before the end of the month.  I can see it now, "Sorry Sabrina you can't go to the Prom, we have to go finalize your adoption".

A Social Visit

Well we're more then half way there.  Sabrina's over four months old, and the adoption becomes final when she turns six.  Right now she's laying on the bed next to me screaming her head off.  Not crying or unhappy at all.  As I posted earlier, she's learned how to scream and is currently enjoying herself doing it.  This has been going on over an hour now.  She's apparently thrilled with herself that she can pull this off.  That makes one of us.  Her other new habit is trying to master the Bronx Cheer.  Such a lovely child.

Anyway the adoption.  Today we had a visit from our social worker.  We have four mandated visits during the process; after today we only have one left (September's).  Our SW is really nice and very easy going.  You can tell she really cares for children.  She is the same person who did our homestudy last year so she's very familiar with our case.  Today's visit lasted about an hour, and consisted mostly of just me bringing her up to date on Sabrina's progress, and us swapping stories about our Labs (she is very active in Labrador retriever rescue; see link to the side of the page).  The only drawback is this pleasant little hour costs $330.  Just another adoption expense!

Our next visit will be towards the end of September, after which our SW will write and deliver her report to the IAC in California, who will forward it to the court.  Once Sabrina turns six months old on October 18th, it will be off to L.A. for our finalization hearing with the judge.  Once that's complete, Gregg and I will officially and forever be her parents.  Her original birth certificate will be destroyed, and a new one issued with our names on it.  I wonder who will be the Mother?

ICPC...Huh?

Well we're settling in to our digs here at the Marriott Residence Inn in Ontario California. Here's a tip for anyone waiting on your ICPC paperwork...play the adoption card when checking in. We checked in here the night before picking Sabrina up from the hospital and explained why we were here to the desk clerk. They ended up giving us their best room (the "penthouse") for the price of their cheapest room. We've got a living area, bedroom with French doors (ooh, fancy!) and full bath, a kitchen, and an upstairs loft bedroom with full bath. Not bad. Plus they have hot breakfast every morning and three nights a week free dinner. SOLD!

In a nutshell, here's what ICPC is:

If a child is born in one state, commonly known as the "sending state" and the adoptive family lives in another state, called the "receiving state", the adoption placement must be approved by the Interstate Compact for the Placement of Children. (ICPC). All states are members of the ICPC. For the purposes of an adoption, it is illegal to move a child across state lines without meeting the requirements of the ICPC.
The documentation submitted to the ICPC for approval includes the adoptive parents home study, the child's birth information and other health information, biological information on the birth parents, and relinquishment or termination documentation from the birth parents. Documentation for the child and the adopting parents will be forwarded to the ICPC office in the sending state, which will forward the documents to the ICPC office in the receiving state. The ICPC offices review the documentations to verify that their state laws have been complied with.

This entire process can take from a week to three weeks. In the meantime here we are. Being the cook that he is, Gregg determined in advance that he needed to bring his own special pots and pans as he was sure the ones here wouldn't be to his standards. I scoffed at this, but then again tonight I enjoyed delicious meatloaf and mashed potatoes with cheese. Worth it! Tomorrow we're going to take long lunches and walk around Ontario Mills Shopping Center with Sabrina while they clean our suite. Her first shopping trip. Better make sure she doesn't take after Papa...I can't afford that!

On a side note, you probably think Monday morning we jumped out of bed and rushed to the hospital to get Sabrina. Well no. We're gay. We went to Target first. Then the hospital. Tahr-zay, you know.

Those Three Daddies

This is what you look like when you spent all morning dock diving, swimming, playing ball and Frisbee, and "chasing tail" at Cosmo Park. It's five hours later and they've barely moved. Yay exercise!

We've talked a lot, and other open adoption blogs have talked a lot, about Birth Mothers. But what about da baby daddy? Birth Fathers are part of the story too. I'll talk about our daughter to be's Birth Father here a little bit. At the moment, he is out of the picture and Lucy does not know where he is. The IAC has investigated all of the addresses she has given them, but no luck. Therefore, he will not be able to sign relinquishment papers giving up his parental rights. Even if he did respond, (in California anyway) he'd still have to meet with the IAC to sign, which is unlikely to happen. Since the agency has worked with Lucy to do their due diligence on locating him and they cannot, his rights will be terminated in court as "failure to locate". Of course we have to hire a lawyer to do this, but it has to be done. I wish it didn't; I wish he could participate in the process like Lucy, and see what the future holds for his unborn daughter. But I guess if he doesn't care enough to stick around to help her mother give birth or be a supportive parent, well, that says a lot. My gut tells me he's aware of what's happening and just doesn't want to deal with it, so no response is his method of choice. Still, wouldn't it be nice to meet the people who are going to raise your daughter as their own?

Wii Are Ready And Waiting...

Well as I said, we're off and running. Today our profiles were linked to IAC, and we're waiting to hear from Birth Momma. It's been about 10 hours and no one's called yet. Wonder if I should start to panic. After all, we are on the last page of families. Actually, we are the last family on the list altogether! But that's OK. Long as we're up there.

In the meantime, tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and the end of the month is Gregg's birthday (Feb. 28th). We got our tax refunds, and I got a nice bonus from work, so we've got some money in the bank for the rest of our adoption stuff. (Although, at the rate we spend money on this, it seems never ending!) We said we were going to take it easy on spending, but he's so great with helping me deal with all this and he's so loving that I broke my own rule and got him a Wii, which he's wanted for a while now. It's worth it to see the smile on his face. I just love that. Giggle.

OK--Let's Go Adopt a Baby!

Eleven months of work and patience has finally paid off. All of our references have been checked, we've gone to seminars, we completed our home study, we created, printed, and sent our letters to the IAC, passed interviews, took medical tests, talked about alcohol and drug pregnancies, talked to our parents, friends, and relatives, started blogging and met great new blog friends, read books, argued and made up, wrote checks that rival the economic stimulus package, watched Juno, learned about gay penguins raising chicks, laughed, cried, made lists of names, haunted Targets baby section, survived Paintgate, made friends with lots of great families with two daddies and two mommies, bonded with other IAC clients, built a website, decided on "Daddy" and "Papa", stressed over business cards, got a crib, elected a president who is in favor of gay adoption, fought against religious nut jobs, and explained to The Boys more the once that they're getting a human sibling, and can't have a kitten.

Whew--That's one run on sentence! Well, everything is finally done. Today the IAC cleared our file, and we are officially in the book! What does that mean? It means, fellow bloggers, that our letters are ready to be distributed to potential birth moms, we'll have our profiles up on the IAC site, and our website will be linked to theirs! Thursday we're having a conference call with our counselor Lane to discuss speaking with potential birth moms. On Friday, our website and profiles will be up on the "Choose a Family" page of the IAC's site.

Get ready Little Finster...you're close to meeting Those Two Daddies!

Our Letter Building Party

Just a quick note...kinda.
We finally got the email we've been waiting for...our letter has been accepted! Finally. When I got home, Gregg was preparing all the final paperwork. I went off to Staples to get the 125 copies of the letter we needed. Thank goodness I had the girl run off one copy first, even though I already knew what it was going to look like from last week's test run. On both sides you could see a faint line cutting the paper in half. I asked the woman, is this my file, or from the printer? "Oh it's our printer it's been doing that" was the response. "125 right?" Um, no. I can't believe it was no big deal to her. How many customers left there today with imperfect print jobs. Well, I needed 130 copies of our main picture, and I dropped them at Wal-mart before I went to Staples. Now I know what you're thinking. If I'm gay about anything, it's Wal-mart. I hate that store. It's just so...Wal-marty. But the digital prints they make are the nicest of anywhere, much nicer then Target, and believe me, I tried to prove to myself that Target's would be better. They're not. It takes an hour for them to finish, so I went to Office Max. Yes, the same one from the business card drama. The one where nobody has a clue what they are doing. After the woman took my flash drive, I had to wait 40 minutes for them to get to me. It then took another 45 to get the job printed because they didn't know how to get the printer to do both sides. I let them play with it while I went to get the pics from Wal-mart. They were just about done when I got back. The woman was so apologetic, then asked me to explain Open Adoption to her because she can't have kids of her own. So we had a nice conversation. Then came the dreaded moment...ringing this stuff up.
"OK, 125 double sided color copies on 85 pound photo cardstock...that's $160.19. Boy sure adds up huh?"
"Well yeah, but honestly I thought it would be more then that."
"Oh it is."
"It is?" Great. More coming.
"Well normally it is. But I feel bad you had to wait so long. And I'm sure adoption is expensive. So I only charged you for one side."
Wow. A $160 discount. My cheapness was doing the happy dance to 3 AM techno music inside my chest. Boo-ya! What a nice lady...guess she just saved a customer!

When I got home, we got out the white paint pens, the glue sticks, and the letters and pics (well and a couple glasses of wine) and started letter building. Paste the main picture on the front, use the paint pens to sign our names on the blue Thanks For Reading Our Letter part, and almost 3 hours later, Voila, birth mother letters!

I took some pics, of course my digital camera decided to kill it's battery now so I had to take them with an actual film camera. Geez. I might as well write this blog on a typewriter and carrier pigeon it to my readers! (The one that goes to Michelle in Guam won't be happy LOL.) Once they're developed, I'll post them.

But tomorrow we mail the letters...finally. We won't make the books this Friday, there's more drama to tell, but we'll be there next week for sure. I'll share the rest of the story tomorrow, right now bedtime.

Good luck letters...find your way to Finster!

The Race to Friday

We're in a sprint to get everything done by Friday, so we can (finally) be in the books with our adoption agency. The hardcopy of our letter was sent over UPS and should arrive on Wednesday morning. (OK note here: I actually mailed it on Monday, but UPS wanted $65 to mail one piece of paper from Phoenix to Los Angeles overnight. Are you kidding me? I want to be a father, but I'm too cheap for that. I opted for the $16 two day deal, and that to me is way too much still. I could have done the post office for less. As a matter of fact, I need to google "cost of raising a kid". If it comes to more then $65 a week, forget it. What am I, made of money?)

We've been corresponding with Lane, and he let us know what paperwork we're missing from our file. So we've been faxing and emailing that. I had our local agency, Adoption Specialists of Arizona, fax over some final home study stuff that they should have sent over with the approval notice back in September. If all goes well, we'll be ready Friday. We'll be linked to IAC's website and they will send out our letters to prospective birth mothers (PBM's in official adoption lingo). Of course, we'll have to get 100 copies of the letter printed and mailed to the IAC, so I'm realistically thinking it will be next Friday, the 13th. Oh. That's not good is it? Well if we get a boy we'll just name him Jason...

Waiting and Waiting...To Wait.

It's been over a week since I sent our birth mother letter into the IAC for approval. I did hear back that they've received it, but still no word from them on what they think about it or if it will be approved. I think I said before that I won't mind waiting for a potential birth mother to contact us, but this waiting for each step to be completed is what really kills me. It's like, come on already! Like being trapped in a giant ticking clock or hourglass just sitting there while precious time is wasted.

What a geek I am. That reminded me of this.

And don't get me started. They're not gay. Really. Not gay.

Letter Time Frame

We heard from our counselor Lane at the IAC yesterday via email. Looks like he had a total of 12 letters to review when he got back from the holiday break; ours is #4 on the list. So I guess we won't hear anything back on it until at least sometime next week. Bummer. I was hoping to spend the weekend at the printers. Oh well.

One other thing. We sent in some more paperwork this weekend regarding our choices on birthparent races as well as drug and alcohol use by birthmothers. This is pretty personal stuff so I won't post it all here. We are pretty open to almost any race, although our preference would be a mixed black and white child.

(No not like this !)

As for drugs and alcohol, we've done some research on the various substances and how they can affect a pregnancy. Alcohol turns out to be the worst of the lot. We also know we can't say NO to everything, we'll never see a baby. So we've laid down some pretty rigid ground rules, and we'll just have to take it from there. Fingers crossed.

I hope this letter revision goes quickly and gets accepted. We're so close now I'm finding this the hardest part so far!

Background on the Letter

I realized my last post about finishing our birth mother letter might need some clarification. I did have a friend at work design our first copy, which the IAC sent back to us with recommendations for a lot of revision. As much as I appreciate help on this, my friend travels a lot for work and has a lot on his plate, and we just couldn't get together for a large block of time to work on this. We're not very close friends, and not even in the same department at work, so as the time frame began to drag on I got more impatient but didn't want to really push the issue. After all, I approached him about it; before that he didn't even know we were adopting. So really I just needed to bite the bullet, sit down, and get this thing done. I did the major design of it around some of the concepts he came up with, so he really did get me off on the right foot to putting it together. I'm quite picky when it comes to project type stuff anyway, so once I got going on what I wanted to do I kind of got into it.

I cruised around the IAC site a bit clicking on prospective families today in search of other letters. We'd seen some hard copies while at our seminars at their offices last spring, but I wanted to see what was currently out there. As I suspected, some of the families had posted their letters on their individual websites. I would say as far as the look of the letter, ours has to be in the top 70% or so presentation wise. I'm glad our counselor Lane is strict about what he likes, because some of those websites are well...not what I'd expect to see, at least not if I was a birth parent looking for a family to place with.

We'll just have to see what they come back with as far as revisions. I did a quick test print in black and white and I was right, a lot of the cell lines and borders don't print out, so it has a pretty clean look. Fingers crossed! We'd like to be in the book any week now if possible...time's a wastin'!

I'm Writing a Letter to ...

I hate having a sense of humor. I was going to call this post "I'm Wri-Ting a Lettah to Da-Dee" but I knew no one would get it but me. Well, me and anyone who loves "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?". I know, campy comedy with both Joan Crawford AND Ms. Bette Davis. Have your laughs, har har har. (Insert fabulous dead movie actresses from the '40's jokes here...)

Anyway, I wanted to report that over the last few days I've taken off work, I finally managed to finish our birthmother letter! I decided to do it in Word after all. I was going to use Adobe, which I've never touched, and it wouldn't load on my laptop. I'm glad it didn't it would have taken me twice as long. I fought with tables, cells, and alignments but it's finally finished. I'm sending it off to the IAC tonight. So I now present to you the finished product, which will be a two sided card stock print. The main picture of Gregg and I will be an actual photo we affix over the printed version. It still may need a little cleanup, and it has to be approved by our adoption counselor at the IAC. Oh and you may see some cell borders, but they won't show up on the printed version.

Check it out here

Not Sure I Like It

Hmmm, this didn't come out the way I planned...I'm not sure this new look for the blog is going to last very long!

Oh by the way, check this out. We went to Chuck and Jim's house Saturday for a gay dads group night. Chuck said he had a dream that we would have a baby before Christmas. I don't much believe in that stuff, but if you remember I had a "premonition" our home study would be done before Labor Day and we came in within a day or two to spare. Could it be? Better get my letter's next draft into the agency. We looked all day for some pictures we think they'd like, ones of us "doing" things. We can't find any of us together in action shots. It does seem strange huh? Eleven years and we can't find a couple pics that would work. Well our neighbor David said to grab some different T-shirts and a camera and we'll go across the street and hike Falcon Hill with Chase and Ripley, then change and go shoot hoops at the park (ha yeah that will be believable!). In other words, fake it!

Getting Closer...

OK getting close...we have a great PDF of our birth mother letter that we just sent to Lane at the IAC. If you remember the text has already been approved, the pictures have been approved, now we just need it all tied together. My friend Bob at work has put it together with us, and he and I have been tweaking it over the last few weeks. I think it looks great but we'll see what Lane thinks. He gave a quick reply saying at first glance it looks good, but he'll go over it and give us feedback by the end of the week. Fingers crossed. Superstition prevents me from linking to it here. Don't worry once it's done you'll see it.

Side Note: Ripley and Chase heard the Obama girls get a puppy now that Dad has won the election. It's only fair they get a kitten once the baby's here. Umm, no. Keep trying though.

Side Note 2: Crap I forgot what Side Note 2 is. I thought "Oh this would be a good Side Note 2" as I wrote Side Note 1. Now I can't remember what it was. I could make some crap up and put it here but you'd see right through it wouldn't you? Ha.

"Typo-ver" It

OK I'm in slight panic mode...
The stupid cards again. The back side has the IAC's phone number which is
1-800-877-OPEN
"OPEN" is 6736. I put 4262, which is the last four of our toll free number! Ugh I can't believe I didn't catch that with the amount of obsessing I did over them. (None of you caught it either!) Now what to do about it? Gregg says stop worrying if they really want to talk to us they'll just call our number. I guess I could just get out a Sharpie and blot that part out. Take a moment and comment on this quickie poll:

I should:
A. Use the Sharpie and stop worrying
B. Reprint the cards
C. Print a sticky label with IAC's information and cover it up.
D. Stop being so gay and get over it; leave the cards alone.
E. Puns aren't funny and the title of this post is way out in left field.

Pick A Card, Any Card...

Here's a message I posted on the IAC's adoptive parent forums. I was looking for some input on networking ideas, and lots of people use business cards. I'm going back to Long Island for a wedding in about two weeks, and I want to have something to give to people in case they hear of a situation, or a friend of a friend type of thing. Here's my post; feel free to leave your ideas in the Comments...

I've heard a lot about handing out business cards as a networking tool. As I'll be doing some traveling, I think this is a good idea. I'm wondering what some of you did in the design of the card, with such limited space. Obviously, I'll include...

• Our website address
• Our toll free number
• Our email address
• The web address and phone number to the IAC

I'm wondering...

• Did you include first and last name(s)?
• Was there any kind of graphic?
• I'm thinking there should be a short statement that gets the point across as to what we're doing.

Any suggestions? Am I trying to put too much on the card? What do you guys think? Thanks for all the great posts so far; we hope to be on the books in the next few weeks as our home study has FINALLY been approved!

B.
_________________

Bobby "of" Bobby & Gregg
Not our site but my adoption ramblings www.thosetwodaddies.blogspot.com